City Council Won't Require Mayor to Disclose Travel Plans

By KATE TAYLOR

Published: September 29, 2011

A bill that would have required New York City mayors to disclose when they make long-distance trips will not get a hearing in the City Council, the bill's sponsor, Peter F. Vallone Jr., said on Wednesday.

Mr. Vallone said he was informed of the bill's fate a week ago by a member of the staff of Christine C. Quinn, the Council speaker. ''I was told that the Council was focusing on other issues,'' he said.

Mr. Vallone introduced the bill partly in response to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's absence from New York last December as a major blizzard was descending on the city. Later, the administration was accused of failing to adequately prepare for the storm, because streets in some neighborhoods were not plowed for days. As the blizzard approached, the mayor was at his vacation home in Bermuda, although he returned by private plane as the snow began to fall. The deputy mayor for operations at the time, Stephen Goldsmith, who oversaw the Sanitation Department, was also out of the city, at his home in Washington. The whereabouts of the first deputy mayor, Patricia E. Harris, who under an executive order runs the city when Mr. Bloomberg leaves it, were unknown.

Pursuing the bill would have set the Council up for a showdown with Mr. Bloomberg, who fiercely guards his privacy and insists on his freedom to leave town for the weekend without notifying the public.

The bill would have required mayors to inform the city clerk when they traveled either 250 miles from New York City or outside the continental United States for more than 24 hours. The mayors would not have had to say where they were going. When Mr. Vallone introduced the bill in June, a mayoral spokesman, Stu Loeser, called the bill unnecessary, saying Mr. Bloomberg was able to stay in touch by phone and fulfill his job no matter where he was. On Wednesday, a spokesman, Andrew LaVorgna, declined further comment.

Mr. Vallone said his bill was intended to prepare the city for ''another 9/11-type situation where planes are grounded and phone lines are down, and we need to know immediately who has authority on New York City streets.'' He said he was disappointed with Ms. Quinn's decision, which was reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal, because he thought it was ''an important public safety issue.'' He said he would continue to work to get a hearing.

In a statement, Jamie McShane, a spokesman for Ms. Quinn, said the Council's Committee on Governmental Operations, which would handle the bill, had a crowded agenda, including ''reviewing the work of the Board of Elections, new independent expenditure rules at the City's Campaign Finance Board and making sure all of city government is small-business friendly.'' He said Ms. Quinn would continue to monitor the committee's agenda ''in an effort to accommodate Council Member Vallone's hearing request.''

Asked if Mr. Bloomberg's expected opposition to the bill had anything to do with the decision not to give it a hearing, Mr. McShane said, ''Absolutely not.''

Ms. Quinn had signaled a lack of enthusiasm when the idea of requiring the mayor to disclose his trips was first brought up last January, suggesting that the mayor's absence was irrelevant to the city's botched response.

''At the end of the day I don't really care if it was the mayor or the deputy mayor who sent the plows,'' Ms. Quinn told NY1 at the time. ''They didn't get there.''

This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.